Stephen Wilson: Is Anyone There?

 
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    Is Anyone There?

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    For one week a computer telemarketing device made hourly calls to selected pay telephones, engaging whoever answered in conversations about life in the city. This information has been digitally stored. The installation allows viewers to interactively explore the city via a database of these recorded calls and digital, Quicktime movies of life near the phones. It appropriates the often intrusive computer-based telemarketing technology, using it in a new way. The installation challenges the safety of passive art viewership by shifting occasionally into real­time mode and automatically placing live calls to the pay phones, linking the viewer with a real person on the street at the location on the screen.